Engineers sign pledge to halt weaponisation of artificial intelligence

Released in Stockholm at the 2018 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), the pledge - organised by the Future of Life Institute and signed by companies and individuals working in AI and robotics - challenges governments, academia and industry to follow suit and ‘create a future with strong international norms, regulations and laws against lethal autonomous weapons’.

Corporate signatories include Google DeepMind, University College London, the XPRIZE Foundation, ClearPath Robotics/OTTO Motors, the European Association for AI, and the Swedish AI Society. Individuals who signed include Elon Musk, Jeff Dean, head of research at Google.ai; plus AI pioneers Stuart Russell, Yoshua Bengio, Anca Dragan and Toby Walsh.

“I’m excited to see AI leaders shifting from talk to action, implementing a policy that politicians have thus far failed to put into effect,” said Max Tegmark, a physics professor at MIT and president of the Future of Life Institute. “AI has huge potential to help the world – if we stigmatise and prevent its abuse. AI weapons that autonomously decide to kill people are as disgusting and destabilising as bioweapons, and should be dealt with in the same way.”